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In October 2010, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada enacted the Open for Business Act (OBA). A central component of the OBA is its provisions aiming to streamline the enforcement of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act (ESA). The OBA’s changes to the ESA are an attempt to manage a crisis of employment standards (ES) enforcement, arising from decades of ineffective regulation, by entrenching an individualised enforcement model. The Act aims to streamline enforcement by screening people assumed to be lacking definitive proof of violations out of the complaints process. The OBA therefore produces a new category of ‘illegitimate claimants’ and attributes administrative backlogs to these people. Instead of improving the protection of workers, the OBA embeds new racialised and gendered modes of exclusion in the ES enforcement process.

This historiographical essay surveys scholarship on Scottish settlement in Canada which it classifies into three broad categories: first, works that focus on the contribution of notable Scots; second, scholarship that examines the ‘Scottish’ character of Nova Scotia; and third, investigations of Highland enclave settlements – especially in eastern Canada. The study argues that the relatively neglected experience of Scots in British Columbia offers the most fruitful comparison with the circumstances of Scottish settlers in New Zealand. In both contexts, Scottish migration contributed to the dispossession of large numbers of indigenous peoples even as some Scots contributed significantly to trade unionism and international socialist movements that sought to bring social justice to all peoples regardless of ethnicity.

Supported employment (SE) is widely considered to be the most effective intervention for helping people with psychiatric disabilities integrate into the competitive workforce. While fidelity to principles and standards of evidence-based SE, i.e. the Individual Placement and Support model, is positively associated with vocational outcomes, studies have revealed significant heterogeneity in SE programs implemented in Canada. This qualitative study thus aimed to shed light on organizational and contextual factors influencing SE implementation in three Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec). The study adopted several key concepts from the field of organizational studies (e.g. coalitions, archetypes, isomorphism) to guide data collection and analysis. Overall, 20 SE programs provided by 15 different agencies were examined. Findings revealed that agencies’ exposure to different institutional pressures, their interactions and relationships with other groups and organizations, as well as their values, beliefs and ideologies played determining roles in shaping the evolution of SE services in each province.

This article engages in a comparative analysis of the U.S. and Canadian labor movements’ attitudes toward nuclear power, in both historical and contemporary periods, with a view to explaining the divergent policy positions on nuclear power adopted by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the AFL-CIO, respectively. The contrasting views of the AFL-CIO and CLC, it is argued, arise not simply from differing levels of commitment to the principles of social unionism, but from a more complex mesh of ideological, pragmatic, and institutional factors related to union-party relationships and other important differences pertaining to the culture, membership composition, organizational maintenance requirements, and decision-making power bases in both labor organizations.

English/French abstracts of articles in the Fall 2011 issue.

English/French abstracts of articles in the Spring 2011 issue.

Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organizing and Advocacy, edited by Ruth Milkman, Joshua Bloom and Victor Narro, is reviewed.

There is a growing body of research on African Canadians in the 19th century that touches on their experiences in the workforce. Nonetheless, the literature has been largely silent on how labour market opportunities for African Canadians altered over time and, in particular, how members of this community fared with the slow, but nonetheless dramatic, rise of an industrial-capitalist economy. This study uses census data to explore the occupational experiences of African Canadians living in London, Ontario, between 1861 and 1901. Findings suggest that labour market opportunities were better for men of African origins around mid-century but declined noticeably in the succeeding years. African Canadians of both genders were largely excluded from growth areas in the economy, and their labour was highly concentrated in a narrow range of low-skill jobs. Although there is limited evidence of upward occupational mobility over time for some, and a slight broadening of occupational opportunities by 1901, African Canadian men and women were disadvantaged compared to their white counterparts.

The article reviews the book, "The Business of Women: Marriage, Family, and Entrepreneurship in British Columbia, 1901–51," by Melanie Buddle.

The article reviews the book, "The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps, 1920–55," by Sharon Wall.

Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change, by Amanda Tattersall, is reviewed.

Drawing on data collected as part of a larger qualitative study of the experience of restructuring in the non‐profit social services in Canada and Australia, this article argues that resistance, including social unionism, is often a complex form of emotional labour and a source of deep satisfaction for care workers in the non‐profit social services.

The article reviews the book, "Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform," by Mitchell A. Orenstein.

Employment Policy in the European Union: Origins, Themes and Prospects, edited by Michael Gold, is reviewed.

The article reviews the book, "Making Capitalism Safe: Work Safety and Health Regulation in America, 1880-1940," by Donald Rogers.

The article reviews the book, "La signification du travail : nouveau modèle productif et ethos du travail au Québec," by Daniel Mercure and Mircea Vultur.

The article reviews the book, "Seeking Spatial Justice," by Edward W. Soja.

The article reviews the book, "Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home," by Steve Early.

During the last two days of December in 1911 the Finnish Labour Temple in Port Arthur, Ontario, was the scene of one of the most significant events in both Canadian and regional political history before the First World War. Chosen for its geographic position, the temple hosted a pan-national gathering of socialists who, in an attempt to unite the Canadian left, established Canada’s first social democratic party, the Social Democratic Party of Canada (SDPC). The goal of the SDPC was to educate the workers of Canada to consciousness of their class position in society, their economic servitude to the owners of capital, and to organize them into a political party to seize the reins of government and transform all capitalist property into the collective property of the working class. Its activity during the next decade would have a profound influence on both the various manifestations of socialism regionally and nationally over the next century and on mainstream Canadian social politics. However, the hundredth anniversary of its establishment has gone unnoticed by political and labour historians. Part of the reason rests with the simply fact that, although many works mention and even briefly discuss the SDPC, no full-length study has yet been written. In an attempt to rectify this situation, this paper provides an overview of its actions and activities at the Lakehead,between 1911 and 1918. --Introduction